My immediate idea for a character is a relatively unstable mercenary working as a caravan guard, with mechanical knowledge and the biggest gun he can make by splicing together broken machines. Also, explosives.

I have decided on the weapon proficiencies that exist, and will keep them in the original fallout spirit. No other proficiencies exist, but I will just give modifiers based on the character's background to some skills.

The weapon proficiencies:

- Unarmed Proficiency: This is a special proficiency, instead of removing a -4 penalty, it will give a +2 bonus to unarmed combat. Specifically toughness, attack and defense. If this is used with a special unarmed weapon, the bonus is removed. Also, unarmed with fists only does bruising damage.- Melee Weapon Proficiency: You know how to handle any melee weapon.- Pistol Proficiency: You know how to handle pistols and revolvers.- Rifle Proficiency: You're skilled with rifles of most kinds.- Heavy Weapons: You have learned how to handle heavy weapons, this is almost the gunner skill, except some weapons also fall under this.

The Shi of Spire for example keep mostly to themselves, and nobody really knows what goes on in their yellow skinned, tilted eyed, black-haired heads.

In the nearby city Cover, just across the bay, they still have electrical lights up and running, and some big machine running to travel about the city. But they are a bunch of assholes, not wanting the Spire people to go into their city, keeping them several miles out of the city actually. (There's no real secret though, it's just a city founded by more recent emergents from a Vault)

Five years ago, a dragonfly machine was spotted, ancient texts calling it a helicopter, but it disappeared furter west and expeditions that tried to find it never returned.

Ordinary human makes you human, your ancestors aren't of much import, unless they are to your character. No ghoul, no mutant, just human.

Yeah, ok, but anyone who wasn't within a Vault during those fateful two hours was mutated, right? So neither them, nor their offspring would qualify as ordinary. Or am I mistaken here?

I was thinking about playing an 'out of the ordinary' Vaultie, a bit too curious for his/her own good. The Vault (s)he springs from would be very dependant on itself, and proclaim that outside only waits death. As (s)he grows up, (s)he comes across more and more hints that there actually is a world outside, (s)he plants his/her escape, gathers the assumed required materials and after weeks/months of planning, makes his/her escape. From there, mostly by luck, the character ends up with a trade caravan, or perhaps a settlement that is visited by the trade caravan, and assuming it the best method to satisfy a deep curiousity for the outside world, (s)he offers the services learned in the Vault in trade for being allowed to travel along. Would that work?

I'd be interested in trimming down my concept of a hard bitten veteran scout to a human character, most likely an older fellow from one of the less technologically advanced towns, apparently a bit eccentric from having spent many years in the wastes alone.

I'm not terribly familiar with the rules, but the concept calls for middling to average strength, decent dex, high constitution, fairly low intelligence, good wisdom, and most likely terrible charisma. The character would need a lot of skill points divided between outdoor survival skills, knowledge skills and stealth skills, and proficiency with rifles. For a feat, assuming rifle proficiency doesn't take the feat slot, I'd most likely take track or some other system equivalent. As for starting equipment, will something like a DKS-501 military grade sniper rifle be available to starting characters, or will starting characters have to make do with a scoped hunting rifle? (Of course, I could understand the characters being down to pipe rifles and sharpened sticks, although that would most likely change within a couple of sessions.)